To this effect are we taught by these ancient catalogues, which, however, do not exhaust all their interest in mere matters of prices and fashion. We can learn much from their pages and advertisements of the manners and customs of our ancestors in Bookland. It seems that there were travelling auctioneers a couple of centuries ago who prefaced their remarks with eulogies of the Mayor and Corporation of each town at which they stopped, by way, no doubt, of securing their patronage. Sales began at eight o'clock in the morning then, and went on, with a mid-day interval for refreshment, until late at night. Sometimes the auctioneer sold by the candle-end; that is to say, lit a morsel of candle on putting up some coveted volume for competition, and knocked it down to him who had bid the most when the light flickered out. This was, distinctly, an excellent method for bolstering up excitement, for every splutter must have been good for a hasty advance, regretted very possibly when the modicum of tallow entered on a fresh lease of life. When not selling by the candle-end, an auctioneer would dispose of about thirty lots in the course of an hour, and was quite willing to accept the most trifling bids. Business is more rapidly conducted now, for few auctioneers stop to curse their fate, or to regale their audience with anecdotes, as one George Smalridge, who in 1689 wrote and published a skit on the prevalent way of doing business, says was quite the usual custom in his day. His tract is written in Latin, under the title 'Auctio Davisiana,' and gives a fanciful account of the extraordinary proceedings that took place at the sale of the books of Richard Davis, an ancient bookseller of Oxford, who had fallen into the clutches of the bailiffs. The auctioneer commences with a dirge said, or perhaps sung, over the miserable Davis: 'O the vanity of human wishes! O the changeableness of fate and its settled unkindness to us,' etc. Each book is extolled at length, and there are pages of lamentation and woe as Hobbes of Malmesbury, his 'Leviathan,' 'a very large and famous beast,' is knocked down, by mistake, for the miserable sum of five pieces of silver.
An exhaustive chapter on early book auctions would necessarily commence with the dispersion of the stock of Bonaventure and Abraham Elzevir at Leyden in April, 1653; but the Elzevirs must look to themselves, nor are these remarks intended to be even approximately full. Rather are they discursive, and in praise of catalogues in the mass; intended merely to put someone else with more space and time at his disposal in the way of rescuing them from the neglect into which they have fallen. The next chapter is more specific, for in that we will take a very famous sale of less antiquity, and endeavour to draw comparisons between then and now. And these comparisons will perhaps be very odious, for they will necessarily appeal directly to the cupidity of every bookworm that breathes, to every book-hunter who prowls around in search of rarities, and returns home—empty handed.
CHAPTER II.
A COMPARISON OF PRICES.
The important sale to which reference was made in the last chapter is that of the library of John, Duke of Roxburghe, which was dispersed on May 18, 1812, and forty-one following days, by Robert H. Evans, a bookseller of Pall Mall. This sale is of extreme interest for two reasons. In the first place, the collection was the most extensive, varied, and important that had hitherto been offered for sale in England, or indeed, anywhere else; and, secondly, it may fairly be regarded in the light of a connecting-link between the old state of things and the new. The Roxburghe library was not 'erected,' as Gabriel Naudæus has it, on traditional principles; it was of a general character that appealed to all classes of book-men. On the other hand, it was not quite such a library as a collector of large means might be expected to get together at the present day, for the tendency is now to specialize, and in any case many of the books that the Duke obviously took an interest in are of such little importance now, and so infrequently inquired for, that they would most assuredly be refused admission to any private library of equal importance and magnitude. Even a general lover would hardly be likely to manifest much interest in a number of volumes on Scots law or to hob-a-nob with Cheyne, who in 1720 wrote a book on the gout, or with Sir R. Blackmore, notwithstanding that eminent physician's great experience of the spleen and vapours. That lore of this kind has its merits I dispute in no way, but it is not exactly of a kind to interest the modern collector, who, even if he aim at all branches of literature alike, would much prefer to have his legal and medical instruction boiled down, so to speak, to the compass of a good digest or cyclopædia.
Nevertheless, May 18, 1812, is among the fasti of those who to a love of letters add a passion for books. It is the opening day of the new régime—the birthday, in fact, of those who revel in first editions and early English texts. Brunet said that the 'thermometer of bibliomania'—objectionable word!—'attained its maximum in England' during these forty-two days of ceaseless hammering, and Dibdin went perfectly insane whenever he thought of this 'Waterloo among book-battles,' as he called it. Everyone of course knows the chief episode; that struggle between Earl Spencer and the Marquis of Blandford for the 1471 Boccaccio, in its faded yellow morocco binding, and how the latter carried it off for £2,260, a most idiotic price to pay, as subsequent events abundantly proved; for seven years later, when Lord Blandford's library came to be sold, the coveted volume was acquired by his former rival for considerably less than half the money. It now reposes in state at Manchester, or, as some choose to say, is in prison there, though it is perhaps too much to expect that all good things should be forcibly removed to London, as some greedy Metropolitans wish them to be.
The Duke of Roxburghe's library comprised rather more than 10,000 works in about 30,000 volumes, and the auctioneer's method of classifying this large assortment was so peculiar that he feels constrained to apologize for it in a rather extensive preface.
'For instance,' says he, 'the Festyvale of Caxton, printed in two columns, of which no other copy is at present known, may be found classed with a small edition of the Common Prayer of one shilling value.'
The 'Festyval' brought £105, and the little Prayer-Book, which proves to have been printed at London in 1707, 8s. 6d., which is more than it would be at all likely to sell for now. But what about Caxton's lordly tome; how much might that be expected to bring in case it should once again find its way into the open market? Judging from the present price of Caxtons, perhaps five or six times the money would not be an impossible figure, but there is no telling. It might bring more, even though it has the misfortune to belong to the second edition, for only six copies are known, and several of those are imperfect. Of the first edition of 1483, only three perfect copies are to be met with, and that is, of course, quite a different matter. The auctioneer need not, as it happens, have sought to excuse himself so energetically for placing good and bad books side by side, for the whole catalogue is arranged under subjects, and to do otherwise would have been manifestly impossible. He might, however, have entered somewhat more fully into detail as to condition and binding, for some of the books were, confessedly, 'thumbed to tatters,' and a suspicion that this or that 'lot' may be so afflicted lurks in every page of the catalogue.
The first book brought to the hammer at this sale; the preliminary bombshell which, to pursue Dibdin's metaphor, was the signal for a furious cannonade, consisted of the 'Biblia Sacra Græca,' printed by Aldus in 1518. This is the first complete edition of the Bible in Greek, and an important book on that account. It brought £4 15s., and any book-hunter might heartily pray for half a dozen copies now, on the same terms, for the present auction value runs to about six times as much. In fact, a sound copy sold only the other day for £27. So, too, Schoiffer's Latin Bible, printed at Mayence in 1472, folio, would be considered cheap now at £8 8s., assuming nothing was wrong with it. In 1893 a copy in oak boards brought £20 exactly. On the other hand, Baskerville's Bible, Cambridge, 1763, was excessively dear at £10 15s., seeing that a very fair copy can be got at the present time for about £1 10s. Collectors of Bibles are responsible for much of the terrible confusion that takes place when we begin to draw comparisons in matters of filthy lucre. If a Bible come from a noted press, or is an original edition of its version, or very old indeed, then up goes the price, especially if it be printed in English. One would have thought that Baskerville being an Englishman, and a fine printer in his way, would have been good for much more than £1 10s. But no; he has not been dead long enough, for the collectors have made it a rule that no English Bible printed after 1717 is any good at all, and consequently that the 'Vinegar Bible' is the last book of the kind in point of date worth looking at, unless, indeed, exception be made in favour of one of the six large-paper copies of Bentham's Cambridge Bible of 1762, which are reported to have luckily escaped a conflagration. The late Mr. Dore, who was a strong man on the subject of old Bibles, says that a little research would reveal the existence of many more than the traditional half-dozen copies, so perhaps, after all, the conflagration is a myth. But if Baskerville's Bible brought what we should now consider to be an outrageous sum, what shall be said of 'The Holy Bible, illustrated with Prints, published by T. Macklin, six volumes, folio, 1800,' which went for £43, incomplete though it was. Some £2 10s. for the whole seven volumes is not at all an uncommon auction price at the present day, and this amount and more would most certainly be swallowed up by the binding alone. What it comes to is that among all these books of theology, Biblical comment, criticism, polemics, sermons, and works of the Fathers, prices have fallen since 1812, except in those cases where collectors have stepped in to rescue old Bibles, works associated with some great religious revolution, or specimens of rare typography from the presses of old and noted printers.